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Ask HN: How and when do you log your food?

3 points by aismail ↗ HN
Hi HN,

I'm a quantified self geek. I have been logging my food for 7 months now (almost daily), and I would like to hear more about your experience doing that.

How are you logging the food? When do you log your food? How do you manage through weekends or vacations? What about estimating the quantity of food?

18 comments

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auganov
I'd use cronometer.com everyday and try to always get the calorie counts right (didn't care so much about other metrics). My margin of error was around 50 calories/day (figured out by comparing with expected weight loss). The thing is after around 2 months I developed a fairly good intuition and just didn't need to use the software anymore.
aismail
I personally use MyFitnessPal + some techniques to do food logging and get the calories burned from BodyMedia. How do you get your own calories burned?
auganov
I don't exercise, slightly adjusted BMR x 1.2 pretty much worked.
aismail
So you prefer not to exercise to eating more and exercising?
auganov
It's kind of hard (if you're not into exercise) to burn more than 400 daily. So given that I burn ~1580/day by default an extra 300 is not such a big incentive to exercise. It's just an extra small meal/snack.
aismail
Using http://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculator, it seems that "by default I burn around" 1.9kcal per day. However I've found it quite easy to hack 700 of them into a day just by exercising for 10 minutes and having more walking meetings. In your case, do you consider walking exercising?
auganov
So you burn a total of 2600 kcal day and 700 is from the 10 minute exercise and walking meetings? Sounds like the exercise has to be super intense? Or tons of walking. Well I consider all non-bmr' burn exercise. I rarely even leave my house and when I do it's usually 3 blocks away, so under 20kcal. Fidgeting would probably contribute more lol.
aismail
I actually burn more than that (I average somewhere above 3000kcal), but the 2600 that I mentioned is from mostly passive activities. Did you know that Nelson Mandela walked 7 miles in his cell every day? I don't think working at home should stop us from being more active.
auganov
The thing with me is that I'm not so bullish on health (or other) benefits inherent to exercise. So if I was to go out of my way and exercise i'd only do it to eat more. And yea walking around a room is fun, especially if you're locked up in a cell :-D I do that once in a while when I get excited about a new concept.
MalcolmDiggs
My Samsung phone came with some "S Health" software preinstalled. Has a pedometer, an exercise tracker and a food log. Not the most complete food database, but seems to work fine.

I used to use mypyramidtracker but I'm not sure if that exists anymore.

aismail
Apparently that one was replaced by https://www.supertracker.usda.gov/default.aspx. So what is your daily routine around that? When do you log your food?
MalcolmDiggs
As far as routine: When I was serious about calorie counting I carried a small notepad (about the size of an index card) and pen in my back pocket at all times. I'd jot down every single thing I ate, right when I ate it (or else I'd forget).

When I'd get home for the day, after I had my last meal I'd pull out my notepad, go to the tracker and tediously enter everything. Just once a day. This worked for me because I snacked a lot, and pulling out the laptop/phone for every single snack just seemed ridiculous. But the notepad was easy and nobody seemed to notice.

aismail
Very interesting! I've noticed that some people can just "keep it in their head" (including snacks) for 1-2 days. I guess their memory is much better than ours, heh! I enter it immediately after eating as well. But I use the mobile phone since I don't snack that much.

Why did you care about other people noticing the notebook?

FlopV
I pick a macro plan (protein/fat/carbs), then eat according to my macros for each meal. So I set them prior, then just count them via the labels.
aismail
What do you do when labels are not available? (e.g. eating out)
jordsmi
I use myfitnesspal to log food.

Lately I haven't been logging as much since I just eat between the same 2-3 things everyday.

I usually log my day again if I eat something new.

For estimating food I weighed things out in the beginning and how I just eyeball it to be the same amount.

aismail
Which moment of the day do you use to log your food(s)? How did you learn to eyeball your food?
jordsmi
When I log, I log before/during cooking of the meal. I'll usually plan my meal on myfitnesspal so I know what all to make so that it fits my macros.

And for eyeballing after making the same things over and over and weighing them out, you start to get a feel for how much it is you need. Every once and awhile I'll weigh out what I eyeballed to make sure I'm not going too low or high.